Sacred Terror: The Global Death Squad of George W. Bush

[RBHam]

by Chris Floyd
http://www.chris-floyd.com/

excerpt:
On September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of "lethal measures" against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an "enemy combatant." This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate "enemies" on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.

The existence of this universal death squad – and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents – has not provoked so much as a crumb, an atom, a quantum particle of controversy in the American Establishment, although it's no secret. The executive order was first bruited in the Washington Post in October 2001. I first wrote of it in my Moscow Times column in November 2001. The New York Times added further details in December 2002. That same month, Bush officials made clear that the dread edict also applied to American citizens, as the Associated Press reported.

The first officially confirmed use of this power was the killing of an American citizen in Yemen by a CIA drone missile on November 3, 2002. A similar strike occurred in Pakistan this month, when a CIA missile destroyed a house and purportedly killed Abu Hamza Rabia, a suspected al Qaeda figure. But the only bodies found at the site were those of two children, the houseowner's son and nephew, Reuters reports. The grieving father denied any connection to terrorism. An earlier CIA strike on another house missed Rabia but killed his wife and children, Pakistani officials reported.

But most of the assassinations are carried out in secret, quietly, professionally, like a contract killing for the mob. As a Pentagon document unearthed by the New Yorker in December 2002 put it, the death squads must be "small and agile," and "able to operate clandestinely, using a full range of official and non-official cover arrangements to…enter countries surreptitiously."

[adolfo]

1. IMPEACH!!

The oath to be taken by the president on first entering office is specified in Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

[alfredo]

2. Do you have the name and number of the

Executive order?

[enough]

3. Once again, Chris Floyd makes it crystal clear. (nt)

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. Any one can be desappeared

any time, any where. This is how Bush keeps Americans safer.

[derby378]

5. I second alfredo's request

Name and number of the Executive Order, anyone?

[dutchdemocrat]

6. Link... it's a start....

http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/102801ciatargets.html

Armed with new authority from President Bush for a global campaign against al Qaeda, the Central Intelligence Agency is contemplating clandestine missions expressly aimed at killing specified individuals for the first time since the assassination scandals and consequent legal restraints of the 1970s.

Drawing on two classified legal memoranda, one written for President Bill Clinton in 1998 and one since the attacks of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has concluded that executive orders banning assassination do not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action. The CIA is reluctant to accept a broad grant of authority to hunt and kill U.S. enemies at its discretion, knowledgeable sources said. But the agency is willing and believes itself able to take the lives of terrorists designated by the president.

Clinton authorized covert lethal force against al Qaeda beginning in 1998, and The Washington Post reported last Sunday that Bush has signed a more encompassing intelligence "finding" that calls for attacks on newly identified weaknesses in Osama bin Laden's communications, security apparatus and infrastructure.

Bush's directive broadens the class of potential targets beyond bin Laden and his immediate circle of operational planners, and also beyond the present boundaries of the fight in Afghanistan, officials said. But it also holds the potential to target violence more narrowly than its precedents of the past 25 years because previous findings did not permit explicit planning for the death of an individual.

Bush and his national security Cabinet have been plain about their intention to find and kill bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader the administration blames for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The public face of that campaign is a conventional war in Afghanistan using uniformed troops. Yet inside the CIA and elsewhere in government, according to sources, much of the debate turns on the scope of a targeted killing campaign. How wide should the government draw the circle around bin Laden? And in which countries -- among the 40 or so where al Qaeda is believed to operate -- may such efforts be attempted?

Though there are differences on those matters, some officials observed that the agency is surprisingly undivided in its willingness to undertake the mission.

"There's nothing involved in this operation that isn't being debated by somebody somewhere, but our responsibilities are pretty clear to those who have the top secret code-word clearance and the need to know," said a senior intelligence official.

Botched assassinations in the 1960s and 1970s, and their airing in congressional hearings in 1974, left deep scars on the CIA. Executive orders signed by three presidents since, beginning Feb. 18, 1976, were interpreted until recently as forbidding clandestine acts of targeted killing.

SNIP

http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/102801ciatargets.html

[dutchdemocrat]

7. more...

http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorintelligence/bushwidened.html

By James Risen and David Johnston
The New York Times
December 15, 2002

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14 — The Bush administration has prepared a list of terrorist leaders the Central Intelligence Agency is authorized to kill, if capture is impractical and civilian casualties can be minimized, senior military and intelligence officials said.

The previously undisclosed C.I.A. list includes key Qaeda leaders like Osama bin Laden and his chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, as well as other principal figures from Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, the officials said. The names of about two dozen terrorist leaders have recently been on the lethal-force list, officials said. "It's the worst of the worst," an official said.

President Bush has provided written legal authority to the C.I.A. to hunt down and kill the terrorists without seeking further approval each time the agency is about to stage an operation. Some officials said the terrorist list was known as the "high-value target list." A spokesman for the White House declined to discuss the list or issues involving the use of lethal force against terrorists. A spokesman for the C.I.A. also declined to comment on the list.

Despite the authority given to the agency, Mr. Bush has not waived the executive order banning assassinations, officials said. The presidential authority to kill terrorists defines operatives of Al Qaeda as enemy combatants and thus legitimate targets for lethal force.

Mr. Bush issued a presidential finding last year, after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, providing the basic executive and legal authority for the C.I.A. to either kill or capture terrorist leaders. Initially, the agency used that authority to hunt for Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan. That authority was the basis for the C.I.A.'s attempts to find and kill or capture Mr. Bin laden and other Qaeda leaders during the war in Afghanistan.

The creation of the secret list is part of the expanded C.I.A. effort to hunt and kill or capture Qaeda operatives far from traditional battlefields, in countries like Yemen.

The president is not legally required to approve each name added to the list, nor is the C.I.A. required to obtain presidential approval for specific attacks, although officials said Mr. Bush had been kept well informed about the agency's operations.

[dutchdemocrat]

8. More...

The report, written by the Post's National Security Correspondent Dana Priest, provides the fullest account so far of the CIA's secret detention and interrogation program. Two points emerge strongly from the story: first, that a central objective was to reduce legal and political oversight of the process to an absolute minimum; and secondly, that the CIA's policies were drawn up without any thought as to their long-term implications.

Priest reports that "the secret detention system was conceived in the chaotic and anxious first months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the working assumption was that a second strike was imminent." It was authorized by a presidential finding signed on September 17 "that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world."

Not a EO it's a 'presidenting finding'.

http://www.crimesofwar.org/onnews/news-cia3.html

[dutchdemocrat]

9. Al Jazeera take on it...

And shortly after the carnage of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush the younger was reported to have signed a more comprehensive “presidential finding” which concluded that the executive orders banning assassination did not prevent the president from lawfully singling out a terrorist for death by covert action by intelligence agencies. Whether that would cover Saddam is not clear, but given Bush’s efforts to link the Iraqi leader to Al-Qaeda, that is probably the case.
On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the suicide attacks on America, Bush declared Osama bin Laden “wanted dead or alive.” Fleischer said Executive Order 12333 remained in effect, but insisted that “it does not inhibit the nation’s ability to act in self-defense.” No doubt this could be bent to include Saddam and his cronies.

http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2002%20Opinion%20editorials/Oct%202002%20op%20eds/Oct%2023,%202002%20op%20eds.htm

[Binka]

10. The Giggling Murderer

"His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this way. They are no longer a problem."

Floyd nails it in this piece. Sickening. Yet the Corporate Media Whores are droning on and on ad nauseam about the War On Jesus.

[paineinthearse]

11. September 17, 2001, George W. Bush signed an executive order

Executive orders can be found at www.whitehouse.gov

If I had time I'd do some research and post it, or at least a link.

[seafan]

12. More related info:

--snip

The first solid piece of evidence against Bush is his September 17, 2001, "Memorandum of Notification" that unleashed the CIA. According to Bob Woodward’s book Bush at War, that memo "authorized the CIA to operate freely and fully in Afghanistan with its own paramilitary teams" and to go after Al Qaeda "on a worldwide scale, using lethal covert action to keep the role of the United States hidden."

Two days before at Camp David, then-CIA Director George Tenet had outlined some of the additional powers he wanted, Woodward writes. These included the power to " ‘buy’ key intelligence services. . . . Several intelligence services were listed: Egypt, Jordan, Algeria. Acting as surrogates for the United States, these services could triple or quadruple the CIA’s resources." According to Woodward, Tenet was upfront with Bush about the risks entailed: "It would put the United States in league with questionable intelligence services, some of them with dreadful human rights records. Some had reputations for ruthlessness and using torture to obtain confessions. Tenet acknowledged that these were not people you were likely to be sitting next to in church on Sunday. Look, I don’t control these guys all the time, he said. Bush said he understood the risks."

That this was Administration policy is clear from comments Vice President Dick Cheney made on Meet the Press the very next day.

"We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will," Cheney told Tim Russert. "We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

If, as The New York Times reported, Bush authorized the transfer of detainees to countries where torture is routine, he appears to be in grave breach of international law.

--snip

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0527-34.htm

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

13. Mark Thomas offers bounty on Bush (satirically, Mr Secret Service person)

(the ariticle - published in the "New Statesman" - looks at Columbian anti-trade union paramilitaries, specifically the AUC)

(...)

Since Osama Bin Laden has a price on his head and is wanted dead or alive for organising acts of terrorism it only seems fair to offer a bounty to anyone who can kill George Bush. After all he is helping bank roll the AUC. So my contribution to the war against terrorism is to offer £4320, my total earnings for writing in the New Statesman to anyone who can bag Bush. You don't have to bring me his head or snack on his heart. Nothing weird just kill him and send me your bank details c/o the New Statesman. Having said that, if some would be assassin wants to give me the option, I'd like him taken out with a lethal papier mache weapon crafted from flour, water, dictionaries and Enron share certificates. However, these are the finer points of President Bush's demise, I obviously would settle on him accidentally stabbing himself to death with the pin from his enamel US flag badge.

http://www.mtcp.co.uk/article.php?id=12

then the following week:

Readers might have noticed that 2 weeks ago I wrote in this magazine offering £4320 to anyone who would assassinate George Bush. These comments were picked up by the American Embassy, who telephoned the New Statesman offices to complain and threaten unspecified redress. In light of this and any offence caused to others I feel the only thing I can do is increase the bounty. Anyone who kills Bush will now get £4500.

Faced with this new onslaught Americas only reaction can only be to declare a War On Satire. Blair, Bush and probably Punch magazine will stand shoulder to shoulder against their common enemy. Liberals will protest the plight of the thousands of innocent comics, whose only crime is observational humour, caught in the bombing raids. Donald Rumsfeld will appear at a glittering Hollywood award ceremony booming in that gravely voice of his "and the nominations for the axis of evil are" Fanatics will hide in caves doing knock knock gags. CNN will show footage of masked men in desert training camps crawling under barbed wire, slipping on banana skins and chanting in unison " How many Presidents does it take to change a light bulb? Two! One to change the lightbulb and the other to deny any friendship with the broken bulbs energy company."

OK the US Embassy isn?t supposed to have a sense of humour. If it was every now and then they would hide the flag and put up a big sign outside the building saying "Free hardcore porn giveaway. Take as much as you can carry!" just to see who came in. However, if they or anyone else believe that my "offer" is genuine then they shouldn?t bother tutting and reaching for the Basildon Bond, they should report me to the police. The Terrorism Act clearly defines a terrorist as someone whose " use or threat of action endangers a persons life." I am threatening to take action and George Bush qualifies as human life, despite the fact that even Pro Lifers might raise a quizzical eyebrow at this statement.

(...)

http://www.mtcp.co.uk/article.php?id=13

[toymachines]

14. The President's a Mobster

I am definetly turning that into a song.
Hedgecore - jumping into bushes to stay alive.